Modern call centers and telemarketing centers provide services for automatically controlling the dialing of numbers, and finding an available agent at the call center.
Outbound calls from a call center are usually made by a power dialer or a predictive dialer, and when a connection to a customer is established the call is distributed to an available agent via an ACD (ACD: automatic call distribution).
Furthermore, modern systems provide the possibility for a call agent to be able to work from home as effectively as from an office. These solutions provide so-called “remote agent stations”, where a central system, e.g. a switch with ACD-like features, is located at a central call center is able to distribute calls to remote agents as well as to local agents at more or less the same terms. Thus, the central system can maintain a status of the remote agent, e.g. availability, present status, duration of present call, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,778,060 describes a central system based on a conventional ACD switch (ACD: Automatic Call Distribution), which is connected to remote agents and local agents, who continuously transmit their status to the ACD switch via the fixed network of the ACD. Thereby it is possible for the ACD switch to distribute calls to remote agents at the same terms as to the local agents.
A problem related to the prior art systems of the above-mentioned type is however that the systems lack dynamics. Moreover, a problem relating to the prior art is that the systems require expensive equipment situated at the premises of the call agent in order to allow operation of the system and that operation and maintenance of the local switch is extremely expensive.